When a whaling ship is beset in the ice of Davis Straits, there is little work for her second engineer, once the engines have been nicely tallowed down. Now, I am no man that can sit in his berth and laze. If I’ve no work to do, I get a-thinking about my home at At last I bethought me of sporting on the ice. There was head-money offered for all bears, foxes, seals, musk-oxen, and such like that were shot and gathered. So I went to the skipper, and he gave me a Henry rifle, well rusted, and eight cartridges. “Show me you can use those, McTodd,” says he, “and I’ll give you more.” I made a big mistake with that rusty old gun. I may be a sportsman, but before that I’m an engineer, and it seemed to me that Heaven sent metal into this world to be kept bright and clean. So I took the rifle all to pieces and made the parts as smooth and sweet as you’d see in a gun-maker’s shop, barring rust-pits, and gave them a nice daubing of oil against the Arctic The Gleaner lay in a bay some two miles from the shore, and let me tell you, if you do not know it, that Arctic ice is no skating-rink. There are great hills, and knolls, and bergs, and valleys spread all over, and even where it’s about level, the underfoot is as hard going as a newly-metalled road before the steam-roller has passed over it. The air was clear enough when I left the bark, and though the My! but it was lonely, though, once you had left the ship behind! There was just the scrunching of your feet on the frost It may be that I was thinking less of my hunting than was advisable, for of a sudden I woke up to the sound of heavy feet padding over the crisp frost rime. I turned me round sharply enough, but as far as the dim light carried there was nothing alive to be seen through the gloom. As soon as I stopped, the footsteps stopped, too, and I don’t mind admitting that my scalp tickled. However, when I’d hauled up the hammer of the Henry, and it dropped into position with a good, wholesome cluck, my nervousness very soon filtered out. There’s a comfort about a heavy-bore rifle like a Henry—which is the kind always used by whalers and sealers—that you can’t get from those fancy little guns. And then, as it seemed that the animal, whatever it might be, wasn’t going to move till I did, I shuffled my high sealskin boots on the crisp snow to make believe that I was tramping again. The creature started after me promptly. It was hard to tell the direction, because every sound in that icy silence was echoed by a thousand bergs and hummocks of ice; but presently from behind a small splintered ridge of the floe there strolled out what seemed to me the largest bear in the Arctic regions. You must know that the night air there has a There was myself and there was the bear in the dark middle of that awful loneliness, with no one to interfere; and as there was only one of us to get home, I preferred it should not be he. So I took a brace on myself, and stood with the Henry ready to fire. There was nothing you might call I was not what you might call a marksman in those days, and so I set a bit of Cluck went the hammer on the nipple, but there was no bang. My! it was a misfire, and there was the bear coming down on me as steady and unconcerned as a Once more she wouldn’t go off! The bear was now nearly on top of me and was beginning to rear on its hind legs. Somehow the rifle came into my hand muzzle-end, and I hit the great brute across the eyes with the butt hard enough to have felled an ox. I might as well have struck it with a cane. Whack came a big yellow-white paw, the Henry went flying, and my wrists tingled with the jar; and there was I left looking, I’ve no doubt you’ll think, very humorous. The bear might have finished me then if it had chosen. But it must needs turn aside to go snuffling at the rifle and lick the oil off the locks. I turned and footed it. Now, at the best of times, I am no The bear, once he had finished his snuffle and lick at the Henry, came on at a dreadful pace, making nothing of those obstacles that balked me,—he had been born up there, you know. He laid himself out The bear stopped and snuffed that, but I didn’t stay to watch him. I got a good fifty But still the Gleaner was a long way off, over very tumbled ice, and there I was careering on in a costume which was barely enough for decency, and certainly insufficient for the climate. However, it was little enough the bear cared for such refinements as those. I stripped off my last garment as I ran, and gained nigh on two hundred yards whilst he investigated it; and there were the bark’s upper spars showing above the hummocks half a mile away, with me in nothing but my long seal-skin boots! Right up to the vessel did the outrageous beast chase me, and then when I got on board and called for guns, it slunk away into the shadows of a berg and was seen no more. My feet were cut to the bone; I was frost-nipped in twenty places, and you may imagine I had had a poor enough time of it. But the thought of that canvas over-all which I had thrown away first kept me cheerful. It was indeed a very humorous circumstance. Ye see it was a borrowed one. I got down below to a berth, and the steward, who was rated as a doctor, tended me. But Captain Black put sourness on the whole affair. He came down to my bunk and said, “Where’s that Henry?” “Lying quiet on the ice,” said I. “Do you mean to say you left that rifle behind? My rifle!” “I did that same. The thing wasn’t strong enough to fire a cartridge. I tried two.” And then Black used violent and unjustifiable Black stuck out his face at me, and his fringe of beard fairly bristled. “And you call yourself an engineer! You talk about having gone through the shops! Put your filthy engine-room oil on my Henry’s locks, would you? Why, you idiot, have you yet to learn that oil freezes up here as hard as cheese, and you’ve made up the lock space of that poor rifle into one solid chunk?” “I never thought of that.” “To look at your face, you’ve yet to start thinking at all.” So we had it out, and as I was now aroused, I gave him some words on the inefficient way he ran his ship. At last I threatened to prophesy again, and this cooled him off. I offered to go hunting bears for him and he became quite polite. “I’ll make you an offer touching those bears,” he said. “For every skin you bring here aboard, I’ll give you seven shillings “I wish to be rid of you, and that’s the truth. Man, I believe you’re Jonah resurrected. We’ve had no luck since first you put your foot on my deck planks. And, what’s more, the crew is of my way of thinking. So, refuse my offer, and I’ll put you in irons and keep you there till I can fling you ashore at Now there is no doubt Black meant what he said, and so I did not waste dignity by arguing with him. I had no taste for the irons, and as for being turned out on the ice—well, I had a plan ahead. But I didn’t intend to leave Black more comfortable than I could help. So I shut my eyes and said that the ship would have very bad luck that winter, that there would be much sickness aboard. (This was an easy guess.) I said, considering this fact, I was glad to leave such an unwholesome ship. The crew were just aching to get rid of me. This prophesying sort of grows on a man; once you’ve started it, you’ve got to go on with it at all costs, and I could no more resist just letting my few remarks slip round amongst the men than I can resist eating when I’m hungry. The nerves of the Gleaner people were in strings from the cold and the blackness of the Arctic night, and it put the horrors on the lot of them. The one thing they wanted was to see the last of me. They Then I went on deck into the bitter cold and over the side, and stood on the ice, ready to start on my journey. The crew lined the rail to see me off, and I can tell you their faces were very different. The older ones were savage and cared little how soon Jonah might die. The younger ones were crying to see a fellow driven away into that icy loneliness, far from shelter. But for myself I didn’t care. I had method in all this performance. Soon after we were beset in the ice, a family of Esquimaux had come on the Gleaner to pay a polite call and get what they could out of us. They were that dirty you could have chipped them with a scaling hammer, but they were very friendly. One buck who stepped down into the engine room— “Give me a “This is a dry ship,” says I. “Plenty dlink in that box,” says he, handling an oil-can. “Oh, if that’s what you want, take it,” I told him, and he clapped the nozzle between his lips, and sucked “You seem to like it,” I said; “have some more.” But that was his fill. He thanked me and asked me to visit his village when I could get away from the ship. And just then some of his friends were caught pilfering, and the whole crew of them were bundled away. Now I had noted that most of these Esquimaux had bits of bearskins amongst their other furs, and it was that I had in mind when I fell out with Captain Black. Amatikita had pointed out the direction in which his village lay, and it was to that I intended making my way with as little delay as possible. But I kept this to myself, and let no word of it slip out on the Gleaner. Indeed, when I was over the bark’s rails, I headed off due north across the ice. I climbed and stumbled on in this direction till I was well out of their sight and hearing amongst the hummocks, and then I turned at right angles for the shore. The cold up yonder in that Arctic night takes away your breath; it seems to take the manhood out of you. You stumble along gasping. By a chance I came on an Esquimaux sealing, and he beat and thumped me into wakefulness. Then he packed me on to his dog-sleigh, and took my own bit of a sled behind, and set his fourteen-foot whip cracking, and off we set. Well, you have to be pretty far gone if you can stay It was Amatikita’s house I was brought to, and he was very hospitable. They took off my outer clothes and put them on the rack above the soapstone lamp to dry, and waited on me most kindly. Indeed, they recognized me as a superior at once, and kept on doing it. They put tender young seal-meat in the dish above the lamp, and when it was cooked I ate my part of the stew, and then got up and took the best place on the raised sleeping-bench at the farther side of the hut. I cut a fill for my pipe, lit up and passed the plug, and presently we were all smoking, happy as you please. Amatikita spoke up like a man. “Very pleased to see you, Cappie. What you come for? What you want?” “You want shoot those bears yourself?” “Not if I can help it. I’m an engineer, and a good one at that. But as a sportsman I’ve had but little experience, and don’t seem drawn toward learning. It is too draughty up here, just at present, for my taste. I’ll stay and keep house, and maybe do a bit of repairing and inventing among the furniture. I’ve brought along a hand-vice and a bag of tools with me, and if you can supply drift-wood and some scrap-iron, I’ll make this turf-house of yours a real cottage.” The deal was made. I worked away with my tools, and whenever those powdering winter gales eased for a little, Amatikita and his friends would go off with the howling dog-sledges and the Henrys, and it was rare that they’d come back without one bear, and often they’d bring two or even three. These white bears sleep through the black winter months in hollows in the cliffs, and the Esquimaux know their lairs, though it’s rare enough they dare tackle them. Small With a good, smashing, heavy-bore Henry rifle it is a different thing. The Esquimaux were no cowards. They would walk up within a yard of a bear, when the dogs had ringed it, and blow half its head away with a single shot. And then they would draw the carcass up to the huts with the dog trains, and the women would skin and dress the meat, and Amatikita and the others would gorge themselves. At last the long winter wore away. Amatikita dived in through the entrance of the hut one day and told me that the ice-floe was beginning to break. The news affected me like the blow of a whip. I went out into the open and found the sun up. The men were overhauling their skin canoes. The snow was wet underfoot and seafowl were swooping around. The floe was still sound where it joined the shore, but It was high time for me to be off. So the bearskins were fastened by thongs to the sledges and word was shouted to the dog leader of each team. The dogs started, and presently away went the teams full tilt, the sledges leaping and crashing in their wake, with the drivers and a certain Scotch engineer who was Presently round the flank of a small ice-berg we came in view of the Gleaner. She was still beset in the ice; but the hands were hard at work beating the ice from the rigging and cutting a gutter around her in the floe, so that she might float when the time came. They knocked off work when we drove up. “Good-day, Captain Black,” I said. “I’ve been troubling myself over bearskins, and I’ll ask you for seven shillings head money on twenty-nine.” “You’ve shot twenty-nine bears? You’re lying to me.” “The skins are there, and you can count them for yourself.” His color changed when the Esquimaux passed the skins over the side. And I clambered aboard the ship along with them. W. Cutcliffe Hyne. HELPS TO STUDY Tell this story briefly, using your own words. What mistake did McTodd make in preparing for the hunt? What amused you most? How did McTodd show his shrewdness, even if he was not a good hunter? What do you learn about the Arctic region? SUPPLEMENTARY READING
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